Comments (7)

By Mom Unplugged, February 17, 2009 10:44 pm

I find so much good stuff by surfing Amazon! Having no “real” bookstore here and only a tiny library, it is one of my best ways for discovering great books.

One of our latest wonderful reads is Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace. I believe it is something of a classic although it was new to me. Hopefully I am not demonstrating my ignorance of classic children’s literature by recommending it, but recommend it I do!

The story revolves around two five year old neighbors, Betsy and Tacy, who become such inseparable friends, that the title of the book must be Betsy-Tacy (rather than Betsy and Tacy, get it?):

“Betsy’s brown braids went with Tacy’s red curls, Betsy’s plump legs with Tacy’s spindly ones…” (p.1)

Betsy is outgoing, Tacy is shy. But, after a rocky start, opposites do attract and the pair become a “unit” as suggested by the title.

The girls enjoy simple adventures, mostly involving a lot of imagination. It is all very sweet and innocent and charming. There is nothing that I could find to scare particularly sensitive readers. Even I enjoyed reading a bit further along every night before bedtime.

The only potentially upsetting moment is when Tacy’s baby sister dies of an illness. The episode is not really about Baby Bee, but the focus is on how Betsy sweetly comforts sad Tacy. It was well-handled and my rather sensitive children were not upset by it at all.

The author Maud Hart Lovelace was born in Mankato, Minnesota in 1892. This series of books is about her memories of her childhood, “…the happiest childhood a child could possibly know…” (quote from Maud Hart Lovelace, inside of back cover).

The author is Betsy, right down to the straight hair that wouldn’t curl. Her lifelong best friend Frances Kenney (known as “Bick” - baby-talk for “Brick” - due to her red curls) is the model for Tacy. The pair met at Maud’s 5th birthday party, just as Betsy and Tacy meet at Betsy’s 5th birthday.

The book has a very interesting section at the end about Maud Hart Lovelace and her life, complete with some photos of both her and “Bick.” For even more information, there is a Betsy-Tacy Society in Mankato with its own website: www.betsy-tacysociety.org. If you want to, you can even attend their Betsy-Tacy Convention from July 17-20, 2009 in Mankato, MN.

DETAILS - 14 Chapters plus author information, 122 pages, fairly large type-face, some line-drawn illustrations.

Hmmm…..I guess these books are way more popular than I realized.

Enjoy!

PS. We’ll be reading all the others ASAP. By the way, although these books would obviously appeal to girls, my 6 year-old son was just as captivated as his 8 year-old sister. If you have a young boy, you might want to try one from the library because he just might love it also!

Here are all the books in order:

Comments (12)

By Mom Unplugged, February 15, 2009 8:56 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project is wrinkle. We decided to do a little batik and experiment with wrinkling the wax.

You will need a piece of fabric (a natural fiber works best, we used a piece cut off of an old cotton sheet), wax, and a dye. We almost used beet juice, but finally decided on blue food coloring. As usual, I was ill-prepared and had no wax so we just melted some candle stubs. If you melt candles, be thoughtful about your choice of colors since colored wax will dye the fabric.

First we melted the candles in a tin can set in a pan of boiling water. We had white candles and green so we melted them separately and planned on using the green to help color our fabric.

We laid the cloth out on some wax paper and poured the wax on it. Be careful, the can will be very hot! First the white:

Then the green:

As you can see, we tried to cover most of the fabric since we really wanted to see the effect of wrinkling and cracking the wax. If you would like a different effect, then just cover parts of the fabric with wax, or pour on a design or pattern. The dye will not stick to any waxed portion of the fabric:

We let the wax dry and cool completely. The cloth was now as stiff as cardboard.

We crumpled and scrunched the stiff fabric and created cracks.

We put some blue food coloring in a bowl of cold water (hot would melt, or at least soften, the wax), and then we pushed the wax covered cloth in with a spoon. We left it in for an hour and the exposed areas turned a very pale blue. This step might not have been necessary, but at least it got the fabric wet and ready for more dye.

Next we laid the cloth out on a foil-lined baking sheet and dropped straight food coloring on to the cracks and spread it around.

What I learned - be sure to wear gloves if you are going to be handling food coloring! (This photo was taken AFTER I had washed them several times…)

I might be blue forever.

We let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes to let the color absorb, then we set about removing the wax. First we used knives to scrape off as much of the wax as possible.

I covered my ironing board with an old, folded towel and laid the fabric on a brown paper bag. I covered it with another brown paper bag and ironed with the iron on the highest setting but without steam.

The wax simply melted onto the bags. I replaced the bags a few times until no more wax appeared and it was all out of the fabric. We also tried paper towels, since I heard that they worked too, and they did quite well also.

Here is our finished fabric. The ironing dried it all nicely and we were able to work with it right away. Notice the green color in with the blue? The green is from the green candle wax, and is why we chose blue food coloring because we thought the two colors would look pretty together.

We had two little old notebooks that we covered with the dyed cloth using fabric glue.

We added a matching ribbon bookmark, and there you have it! A fun afternoon!

++++++++++

If you did a wrinkle Unplugged Project this week, then please put a link to your post in the Mr. Linky below. If you link to the post rather than the blog, then we will always be able to find you - forever and ever! If you did not do a wrinkle project, then please do not link, but be sure to follow the links to see the other great wrinkle projects. If you wish to read about how to join in, then read more here. We’d love to have you with us!

++++++++++

The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Clothing

I hope you all have fun!

++++++++++

Comments (12)

By Mom Unplugged, February 8, 2009 8:44 pm

I guess I must have picked float as the theme for this week’s Unplugged Project because last week’s marbleizing project involved floating a piece of paper in a baking tray of water. Well, I won’t do that again, because all I could think of all week long were ideas very similar to our marbleizing project. I was completely without inspiration.

Then this boring, snowy Sunday, as the kids were playing Calico Critters, I suddenly had the inspiration to try making a Calico Critter parachute. Parachutes float (…hopefully…)!

We gathered together some scarves of different sizes and fabrics to experiment with, some items for the “cockpit” (a small basket and a little nylon pouch that originally contained some fiberfill stuffing - I am glad to be a packrat, I knew that pouch would come in handy one day!), yarn, scissors, and a couple of fearless test-pilots:

First we cut four pieces of yarn all the same length. Then we tied one piece of yarn onto each corner of the scarf:

Next we attached our basket and pouch. In an effort to take weight into consideration, we decided to put the pouch on the cotton bandanna because the bandanna was heavier than the play silk and the pouch was lighter than the basket.

We tied the strings onto the pouch by bunching up the fabric just as we had done with the scarf.

We tied the basket on with a string on each handle and a string on each side in the middle in order to keep it as well-balanced as possible:

NOTE: Be careful tying the strings onto your “cockpit.” You want to keep them in order so that aren’t twisted and it can get a bit confusing, especially if your cloth is big and your strings long.

Also, you could simply tie your object directly on to the strings without having a container. I think it is more fun with a basket or a pouch though, that makes it much easier for children to experiment with different objects and toys.

The cats found this project to be particularly appealing. Strings plus soft things to lie on meant 5-star kitty excitement:

In popped the intrepid test-pilots, and off we went to the upstairs landing for launch.

Make sure you hold the parachute by pinching it in the center and dangling it all over the edge of the railing before dropping. Also, for best performance, the strings should not be twisted or tangled.

The bandanna went first - success!

Next was the playsilk. It didn’t crash, but it went down pretty fast. I thought that it might be because of the air flowing through the holes in the basket.

We lined the basket with a paper napkin and the second launch was perfect! The parachute floated gracefully down to the ground.

I am pleased to report that no Calico Critters were injured in the testing of the parachutes.

If you are curious, here’s a 5 second video of our silk parachute:

Link: How does a parachute work?

++++++++++

If you did a float Unplugged Project this week, please put your link in Mr. Linky below (link to your post, not just your blog please so your post will always be easy to find). It’s also wise to leave a comment so if Mr. Linky ever disappears, you won’t disappear with it! If you did not join in, then please do not link, but read more about how to join in here.

I am trying to visit at least a few projects every week, but I can’t always get to everyone anymore. I feel a bit bad about that, but blogging is not a full-time occupation for me, so I guess I can only do my best. I hope you all understand!

++++++++++

The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project, will be:

Wrinkle

Have fun!

++++++++++

Comments (15)

By Mom Unplugged, February 5, 2009 9:33 pm

I am depriving my children of an “essential good.”

In Brazil, I might be prosecuted in court. Did anyone hear this little NPR blurb yesterday?

A Brazilian man missed out on soccer matches, the news and a “popular reality show,” when a store did not replace his faulty TV. The judge found in favor of the man, ruling that in modern times, TV is an “essential good.”

Are those of us who do not have TV in our homes, guilty of child abuse? Are we depriving our little ones of an “essential good?”

What about those whose children (TV in the house or not) miss Sponge Bob, Hannah Montana and PBS. OK, Sponge Bob and Hannah Montana are arguable…but PBS? What about Discovery? Is censorship of our children depriving them of an “essential good?”

Am I depriving my children of educational/cultural experiences by not having TV at all?

I wish we could elect to get a few select Discovery Channel, National Geographic, PBS, History Channel shows without receiving all the other stuff. But even those channels can be edgy at times. We were away recently and the only thing on History (or was it Discovery?) was the history of torture devices. Another of those educational channels had a show about Hitler.

I am not depriving my children by having a TV-free home. Culturally they get a lot on the playground: they know about Sponge Bob and Hannah Montana. As far as education goes, my kids get a huge amount of that from school and reading books, just like kids did before TV.

Am I depriving my children of an “essential good?” Personally, I think not.

Comments (19)

By Mom Unplugged, February 2, 2009 9:20 pm

This has actually (unintentionally) been a colorful week for us.

I haven’t mentioned Odyssey of the Mind (OM) here yet, but my friend Wishy and I just discovered it (actually she discovered it) and we dived right in last fall as coaches for our children’s Montessori class (1st - 4th grade). It’s a bit complicated to explain OM in this post, but suffice it to say that the children have to come up with an engineering or creative project entirely on their own. “Outside Assistance” is heavily penalized.

My 8 year-old daughter apparently has the role of a tree in her completely student-created play. She decided she wanted to dye some net green to be her leaves, so she chopped up an old artichoke that we happened to have in the kitchen and boiled the net in it to dye it green. It didn’t work so well. She then tried green food coloring. Not too effective either (I think it would have worked better on a natural fiber). That was all entirely her idea.

Personally I probably would have headed to Walmart for some green dye, or better yet, green net! But of course I couldn’t say that to her - “outside influence.” So, I look forward to seeing what possible solution she comes up with next.

I was so proud of my daughter’s initiative and creative thinking! These Unplugged Projects are more than just a diversion. I believe that they encourage original thought and teach that it is OK to not get it right at first. Just experiment to see what works, and if it doesn’t, then try and figure out how to make it work!

That was a bit of a tangent, but her experiments with dye got me thinking about food coloring and how we could incorporate that into the theme color. I began Googling food coloring and oil because I knew that the two don’t mix and I thought there might be something fun out there. I was quite excited to find this: Marvelous Marbling.

I have wanted to try marbelizing for a long time now. I have fond memories of loving it the time we did it in elementary school. Since the memory has stayed with me that long, it must have made a big impression!

Traditional marbleizing involves oil paint and turpentine. Frankly, I have never had the energy to tackle that. Turpentine - ick. This webpage tells how to marbleize using just food coloring and cooking oil. I had to try it! So we did. I made a few alterations - here is my version.

++++++++++

For this you’ll need a shallow pan that is large enough to fit the paper you’ll be using (I used a nasty old roasting pan), food coloring, cooking oil, white paper (we used card stock - NOTE: thick card stock produces as a nice result, thinner paper tends to get a bit greasy), water and an eye dropper. The eye dropper is optional, but we found it worked better than just pouring.

Put just enough water in the pan to cover the bottom (**VERY IMPORTANT!**). As we discovered, if the water is too deep, the color will sink if you work too slowly.

Put about 1/2 tablespoon oil and 1 teaspoon food coloring into a glass (we halved the proportions of the original since we only had tiny bottles of coloring and I didn’t want to use it all up).

The two ingredients will not be mixed. [NERDY SCIENCE NOTE: Oil and water don't mix due to dissimilar molecular bonds - "like dissolves like" and water molecules and oil molecules are not alike. Read more here: Ask a Scientist - Mixing Oil and Water and here is a good, simple tutorial about solubility and water: Water Tutorial]

At this point, the mixture will look something like this:

Beat it hard with a fork until well blended. It is like mixing an oil and vinegar salad dressing and will take a few minutes. We experimented with mixing it in a jar and shaking it up. That worked even better, just make sure the top is on tightly (we had a bit of a food coloring disaster the first time my daughter tried it).

When done, it will look more like this:

Using the dropper (or gently pouring if you don’t have a dropper), place drops of colors on top of the water. The drops will stay in a blob, or perhaps explode a bit. You can place one color inside another. Experiment.

When you have dots of color all over the surface of your water, use a toothpick, or a fork, or a feather (whatever you want to try) to make patterns in the colors. They’ll make blobs and swirls and pretty patterns.

When you are happy with the design, gently place your paper on top of the water. Leave it for a little bit. We waited until the oil started to show through the back of the paper (about 30 seconds?) and then peeled it gently off.

There will be lots of oohs and aahs as the pattern is revealed!

That one reminded me of a medical slide. LOL! Here are is another pretty one:

We even tried hot water vs. cold water. Knowing that molecules move faster in hot water, we wanted to see if anything different happened to our oil/color mix in really hot water. We didn’t see anything too dramatic, but my daughter did note that the blobs converged a bit more quickly. (For more on hot vs. cold liquids, please read my post: Molecules in Motion).

Let the paper dry then use it for cards, wrapping paper, framed art, whatever you want. Ours will become thank you notes.

According to my 8 year-old daughter, this is her “new favorite project!”

++++++++++

For more color project ideas, please check out all the links here.

++++++++++

The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Float

Hope to see you then! (If you want to join us, please read about how to here.)

++++++++++

(marbelized)